Elminster in Myth Drannor

Rating:
Summary: Another great book by Greenwood!
Review: I loved this book for many reasons one being I always wanted to hear about Myth Drannor and also wanted to hear more about Elminster, two in one! The five star rating is well deserved.

Rating:
Summary: Elminster in Myth Drannor
Review: I really thought this book was a great sequal in the Elminster saga.For all the people out there that havent read this book buy it and read it.But first buy and read the first book Elminster the making of a mage.

Rating:
Summary: AAARRGGHH!!! (once again! why is there no zero star rating?)
Review: I was not disappointed. This book is so bad it can only be regarded as a parody, but only a bad one, hence the single star. Elminster (we all know that he is invincible, has every spell memorized that he'll ever need, gets every woman he desires and goes about slaying everything that dares to oppose him) enters the elven lands. Every friend of elven ways and wonder will have a hard time reading what follows. El decimates Cormanthor by hundreds of elves, young, old, male, female, guilty or innocent, and no one cares about it. Elminster himself instead gets resurrected at least three times, and his cry "Mystra aid me" always leads to mass carnage...but we are all used to Elminsters (and Greenwoods) philosophy, aren't we ? It is with me or dead. That there may be something in between, like taking prisoners or letting other people voice their own opinions is as usual far beyond Greenwoods writing and Elminster's actions. The actual story is not important, it's only use is cloaking the madness between the beginning and the end in some semblence of order. Senseless violence, unbearable arrogance, and apparantly no trace of remorse or bad conscience makes this book like all of Greenwood's other crimes called novels. ##X&!?X#*#XX

Rating:
Summary: No, not great for AD&D fans
Review: If you made it through "Making of a Mage" and have a penchant for misdeveloped, indestructable action-figure characters composed by self-aggrandizing bearded Canadians, you'll want this book.

In "Elminster in Myth Drannor", everybody's favorite magical juggernaut finds himself in Cormanthor - which doesn't become Myth Drannor until the end of the book - on a quest to... well, he doesn't know why he's there. He only knows that the magical tart Mystra has designs for him in Cormanthor. His very presence drives the elves to distraction, resulting in wildly concocted plots to kill him, the king (or Coronal, as he's titled) and others of varying importance. Pandemonium ensues.

I digress. Many have criticized Greenminster's portrayal of elves here, namely, that they are pompous, vindictive, violent and downright evil. They claim that this is not true to elven ways and is more akin to the drow. However, I was not aware that all elves MUST be good and civil. I'm sure many a game has been role played with evil elves without the other players asking "hey, are you sure you're not drow?" In fact, I'd go so far as to say that portraying the evil dimension of surface elves reinforces the nature of the drow, or at least their origins.

Throughout the novel, Elminster befriends a few plot-critical elves, is attacked and maligned by others, and as usual, he chants his beaten slogan "Mystra aid me" whenever the heat is on. Although he's only confronted with one full-blown magical battle in this story, his magic is so unconvincingly powerful that I was never concerned for his safety. He is, after all, Elminster. He's got spells YOU'VE never heard of, in nearly inexhaustable supply, so why worry?

Moreover, why care?

By the end of the book, the reader finally discovers why Elminster is in Cormanthor. Major characters reveal the triviality of their roles, and completely undeveloped characters become critical. Typical Greenminster. I mean Greenwood.

Overall, the book is not utterly abysmal. I was mildly entertained, although I wish I would have stolen it or borrowed from the library. I suggest you do so.

Mystra aid us all.

Rating:
Summary: More in Cormanthyr than here
Review: If you're looking for elf lore, don't look here. Although I applaud Ed Greenwood's pioneering works for Forgotten Realms, and I'm sure he was an excellent DM, he didn't do his homework on established elven lore ... the Reverie, male vs female roles in nobility, and where did this fascination with mushrooms come from? And the sentance about a second human mage dropping his disguise countered all that Ed had led up to about the challenge Elminster faced in getting into the city in the first place.
I do support Ed's vision of the politics of bickering, quarreling elven houses. Sure, they sound like drow in that regard... but remember the Crown Wars. Power corrupts, and elves are not immune to that.

Rating:
Summary: Great middle
Review: The beginning was ok, and the ending was a little less than I had hoped for, but between the first few pages and the last few pages it was awesome. Politics, elfs taken off their high horses :) Good stuff... It was a little decieving though, he was in the City of Cormanthor the whole time, but it wasn't Myth Drannor until the last chapter. I thought it was going to go over the fall more than the beginning.

Rating:
Summary: IT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER
Review: THE BOOK WAS GREAT ON THE WHOLE, BUT IT WAS TOO INSULATED. WE ONLY GOT A VIEW OF CORMANTHOR AS SEEN BY NOBLES. WHAT ABOUT OTHER ELVEN FAMILIES THAT SETTLED ELSEWHERE? AND WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER NOBLE FAMILIES MENTION IN EVERMET: ISLAND OF ELVES? THEY WERE PRACTICALLY NONEXISTENT EXCEPT FOR THE STARYM. AND WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER CORONALS OF THE PAST? WE GOT VERY LITTLE INFORMATION ABOUT CORMANTHYRS LINK WITH OTHER ELVEN KINGDOMS!

Rating:
Summary: Good enough try but the elves are badly portraited
Review: The problem when reading about Elminster is that you know that he will overcome any foe presented against him.He is just too powerful. Elminster is as usually protected by Mystra and thereby impossile to kill. Another thing that annoyed me is that the elves felt like humans.The elves where not the elegant race shrouded in mystery as in the works of Tolkien(unfair comparison). I think a book about elves should be written by Salvatore, after all he did a magnificent job describing the drow and their lifestyle. The part where El was an apprentice puzzled me.Why on earth would an archmage capable of hurling meteor storms serve another mage? Also sometimes I felt like Elminster was a force of evil rather than good slaying elves almost at will.

Rating:
Summary: I have just returned from another world outside of our own.
Review: The qualifications of a good book may well be one that I 'just couldn't put down', but in the case of Elminster in Myth Drannor by Ed Greenwood, it soon became a frightening experience to pick it back up again. To venture within the limitless, surprising, alien world of the true-blood elves of fair Cormanthor knowing that soon I would be forced to leave this mystical realm again and return here where no Mythal stands guard over our own prejudices and arrogant machinations. And where perhaps, no gods draw near to listen to our plaintive cries as well.

Rating:
Summary: Dry and boring as usual from Greenwood.
Review: The whole Elminster series is very disappointing. This series was my first taste of Greenwoods writing and since it came out in hardback, I assumed it would be a good read. Shame on me for judging a book by its cover. Everything else I have read under the D&D umbrella by the varying authors has been a good read has ranged from good to fantastic.

These Eliminster books do not flow and lack depth. I had to struggle through them and then sold them on eBay. These are the only D&D books I have read and sold. I am sure Greenwood is a good guy but not a good author.

If the Eliminster books are your first taste of the D&D realms, try some other authors as well. Any of them will be better than this. This is most defiantly NOT the best and brightest star in the D&D realm of books.